Chapter 29 – Kat
TWENTY-NINE
KAT
With every step I take, the throbbing in my head intensifies. My eyes are red and swollen from crying and all I want to do is crawl back in bed, but I’m starving after skipping dinner. Silently, I tiptoe down the creaky stairs, careful not to wake my sleeping roommates. It’s been silent for a while; I’ve been sitting in my room, waiting to make sure I won’t run into Elijah in the hallway.
I can’t believe he would say something like that. I had already disabused myself of any misaligned perspective of who he really is, but he’s never been that mean to me. Not in so many words, at least. Whenever he said something that hurt my feelings, it was covert or subtle, so much so that at the time I convinced myself I was making it up.
Now I’m starting to realize that is exactly what he wanted.
It’s a bizarre feeling—it makes me feel legitimately crazy. I’ve listened to “Haunted” by Taylor Swift twelve times over the past few hours, and yet every time I hit replay it fills me with rage just the same .
What did I ever see in that guy? I find myself wishing for the guy he was when things were good between us, yet, as I make my way through pitch-black darkness, I can’t think of a single time he made me feel genuinely appreciated—not in a way that didn’t require doing mental gymnastics.
So why the hell do I care?
That’s the eternal question, isn’t it? Why does anyone continue to care deeply for someone who doesn’t care at all?
I approach the threshold to the kitchen and pause as I notice a soft glow emanating from within, cutting through the otherwise dark house. My eyes squint as they adjust and I catch sight of a faint silhouette moving around. My heart leaps up into my throat.
I swear, if it’s Elijah, I might actually lose it.
Tanner appears from behind the white door of the fridge with a bottle of chocolate syrup in one hand and a pint of rocky road tucked under his other arm.
“Hey,” I say quietly.
Despite my timid approach, he jumps in surprise. “Jeez, Kat. Don’t sneak up on people like that!” He laughs, but when his eyes meet mine, his amusement shifts to concern in a matter of seconds.
“It’s nothing,” I say before he can even ask the question.
“You’ve been crying. Sit.” He motions toward the stools lined up along the kitchen counter before grabbing two spoons from the drawer, one of them a small spoon for me. This man manages to remember every minute detail.
I sit on the stool and he sets the pint down before walking over to the fridge and grabbing a bag of frozen peas from the freezer. At first I’m perplexed, but then he holds the bag to one of my swollen eyes. It stings on contact and I wince .
“Sorry,” he mumbles.
“Don’t be—it’s a smart idea.” I hold the peas there and Tanner sits down next to me.
“Do you want to talk about it?”
I genuinely can’t figure out what to say. Elijah shouldn’t bother me anymore; his words shouldn’t hurt because, after all these months, I shouldn’t still be giving him power over me. Yet I do, without hesitation. I do, despite the fact that I spent my entire summer trying to put back together what he broke—despite the fact that he’s given me every reason under the sun to not trust him or want to be around him.
And yet I cried myself to sleep for the umpteenth time because he managed to eviscerate me with a few shitty words. How pathetic is that?
“Not really,” I reply quietly.
Tanner nods and doesn’t pry.
I dig my spoon into the pint of ice cream before taking a bite, appreciating the midnight-snack tradition we’ve somehow wordlessly established. A laugh breaks past my lips as Tanner holds up the Hershey syrup with his brows raised high—a question, a dare, a distraction from the turmoil swirling around in my brain since I read Patrick’s letter last week.
“So, what’s it gonna be? Wanna take a walk on the wild side?”
“I’d hardly say adding more chocolate to a chocolate ice cream constitutes ‘living on the wild side,’ but sure.”
He drizzles the sugary syrup over the top layer of our shared container of ice cream, then waits for me to take another bite. As I usher a spoonful into my mouth, my taste buds are greeted with a burst of bittersweet dark chocolate chunks, perfectly balanced by the sugary syrup. He watches me with a satisfied smile as I savor the delicious combination.
“What?” I ask with my mouth full.
He just shakes his head. “Nothing.”
We proceed like this for a while, a comfortable silence washing over the silent kitchen, a somber energy hanging over us that is a far cry from the first time we did this last year. It’s weird how things are with Tanner. I don’t feel this invasive need to fill the space between us with words just to evade the awkward feeling silence brings.
Because it’s not awkward—not in the slightest. It’s comfortable.
“Elijah and I got into a fight,” I say with a sigh as I push a marshmallow from my side of the pint to Tanner’s. He’s always liked the chunks far more than the ice cream base anyway.
Tanner nods. “I didn’t realize you guys were talking again.” His gaze stays on the ice cream. “Have you guys been…you know?”
It takes everything in me not to scoff as I say, “Do you really think that little of me that I’d do that after what he did?”
“No.” He sets down his spoon. “I don’t think that little of you. I didn’t mean it like that. You—” He sighs and looks at me. “You have an immense capacity to see the best in people, and that guy…you’d have to have that ability to see the good in him. I didn’t mean that you’d be pathetic to do it, not at all.”
“Isn’t he your friend?”
“No. Not really. Casual acquaintances who exist in the same friend group at best. That guy? He’s an ass.”
“Oh.” I look back down at the tub of ice cream, no longer hungry .
“Is that what had you crying—the fight?” He picks up his spoon and scoops a lump of chocolate chunks into his mouth, his tongue languidly licking the creamy dessert off his spoon before he digs it back into the tub.
“Yeah. He said something that got under my skin. It’s fine, I’ve just been sensitive.”
“Don’t do that.” His words are stern, demanding, something Tanner very much is not.
“Don’t do what?”
“Reduce him hurting your feelings to you just being too sensitive. You’re not too sensitive. As I said before, dude is an ass.”
I quickly find myself wanting desperately to divert the conversation away from Elijah, so I change the subject. “I got a letter from my brother.”
This catches Tanner’s attention. His eyes dart from the ice cream to meet my gaze. “Your brother…like, your dad’s kid?”
“Yeah, I guess he found one of my letters that I sent my dad a few years ago. He, um—Patrick didn’t know about me.”
“Patrick is your brother, I’m guessing?”
I nod. “Well, technically it’s also my dad’s name.”
“He named him after himself?”
I nod again.
“Fucking prick. Are you gonna write him back?” Tanner asks.
“I don’t know, I don’t even know what I’d say. He wants a relationship.”
“And you don’t?”
“I don’t know what I want,” I say with a sigh. “I mean, how am I supposed to have a relationship with the brother who is the reason my dad left in the first place? He left a baby at home to be a father to someone else…who the fuck does that?”
“A piece of shit does that,” Tanner says seriously. “But…your brother didn’t know that. You said it yourself; he didn’t know about you. Wouldn’t you like to know what he’s like outside of the random Facebook stalk sessions?”
My brows shoot up in surprise, earning me a chuckle.
“I know you, Kat. There is no way in hell that you wouldn’t be curious about him. So why not get the information from the source? At the very least, it might give you closure about your dad.”
I hate that he’s probably right. I hate that, despite it not being Patrick’s fault my dad left, I still resent him for taking him away. Yes, I’m aware that isn’t how the world works and people can’t be forced to do anything, let alone by a fetus. But…it’s there, the resentment.
There is also that nagging voice in the back of my mind that maybe Elijah is right—maybe my time isn’t all that important—and the second Patrick learns that, he’ll leave too.
“I hate that Elijah still gets to me.” I stab my spoon further into the ice cream. “We broke up months ago and I honestly thought I was fine. But the second he cornered me to talk, the second he was remotely mean to me, I was instantly a mess.”
Pain creases Tanner’s brow. He shakes his head. “It’s because you loved him. That doesn’t just go away. You might want it to, but it doesn’t just vanish. Give yourself some grace. Time will help…among other things.”
“Like what other things?”
“You know what people say,” Tanner chuckles. “The best way to get over someone is to get under someone else.” As he swallows, I can’t help but stare at his bobbing Adam’s apple. “ Find a rando and get laid. Prob doesn’t help that you haven’t been with anyone since.”
“I don’t like sleeping with people I don’t know. While I realize some people can do it…I don’t know, it makes me feel icky.”
“So have sex with someone you do know.”
“I don’t want to use someone I care about like that—that isn’t fair to them. I’d need to find someone who knows it means nothing, and even then it still feels wrong.” I stuff more ice cream into my mouth, relishing the sweet flavor.
“Then use me.” Tanner says it as if he just told me the sky is blue, or that classes start on Monday. Something as mundane as the stucco siding on the back patio.
Immediately I break into a coughing fit, nearly choking on the bite of ice cream I just took. As I finally catch my breath, I turn to him and ask, “I’m sorry, what did you just say?”
Any other man would cower away and backtrack, take my response as a clear indicator that I am not interested. Not Tanner, though.
He grins. “Use me. I’m down for casual sex, you trust me, I know it means nothing. So use me.” He scrapes his spoon against the bottom of the cardboard pint, chasing the last bits of ice cream.
I drop my spoon on the counter with a clink. “You don’t date,” I say with my jaw agape.
“And we wouldn’t be dating.” With a wink, he continues, “What? Are you too worried you’ll fall in love with me or something?”
I smack him in the arm. “No, but wouldn’t it be weird? I mean, me and you…ya know.”
“Fucking? Me and you fucking? You have no issue saying the word any other time—fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck. Us fucking.”
“Jesus Christ, Tanner. I get it.”
He laughs as he tosses the empty pint into the trash can. “If you don’t want to, it’s fine. I’m serious, it’s not a big deal. But if you change your mind, you know where to find me.” He disappears out of the kitchen without so much as a “Good night.”
How the fuck does someone say that and then go to bed?
Fucking serial killer, man.